Pith Number

pith:T6BANPRT

pith:2026:T6BANPRTGG5WJSSKV3YXKCJRD2

not attested not anchored not stored refs pending

Synthesis of epitaxial TaO$_2$ thin films on Al$_2$O$_3$ by suboxide molecular-beam epitaxy and thermal laser epitaxy

Alexander Bordovalos, Andrej Singer, Anna S. Park, Benjamin Z. Gregory, Brendan D. Faeth, Christoph Baeumer, Christopher J. Pollock, Darrell G. Schlom, David A. Muller, Ellen M. Kiens, Enrico Bergamasco, Felix V.E. Hensling, Frank M.F. de Groot, Iris C.G. van den Bosch, Jeffrey Z. Kaaret, Markus Gr\"uninger, Matthew J. Wahila, Matthew R. Barone, Nicole A. Benedek, Nikolas J. Podraza, Noah Schnitzer, Nongnuch Artrith, Shun-Li Shang, Suchismita Sarker, Suresh Chaulagain, Tobias Schwaigert, Tomas A. Kraay, Waldemar Tokarz, Wojciech Tabis, Yorick A. Birkh\"olzer, Zi-Kui Liu

Epitaxial stabilization produces single-oriented TaO2 thin films on sapphire that exhibit a 0.3 eV Mott gap in the tantalum 5d electrons.

arxiv:2601.06716 v3 · 2026-01-10 · cond-mat.mtrl-sci

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\pithnumber{T6BANPRTGG5WJSSKV3YXKCJRD2}

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Record completeness

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2 Internet Archive

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4 Citations open

5 Replications open

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The bundle contains the canonical record plus signed events. A mirror can host it anywhere and recompute the same current state with the deterministic merge algorithm.

Claims

C1strongest claim

We report the epitaxial stabilization of TaO2 on Al2O3 (1-102) substrates using suboxide MBE and TLE, demonstrating single-oriented, monodomain growth of anisotropically strained thin films... reveal a 0.3 eV Mott gap of the tantalum 5d electrons... potential to unlock a hidden metal-insulator transition concomitant with a structural phase transition to a distorted rutile phase, akin to NbO2.

C2weakest assumption

That the grown films are phase-pure TaO2 without significant oxygen non-stoichiometry or secondary phases that could alter the observed gap and oxidation state, and that the DFT/group-theory analysis accurately captures the limited stability of the rutile phase without experimental confirmation of the predicted transition.

C3one line summary

Epitaxial TaO2 films on Al2O3 show monodomain growth, tetravalent Ta, a 0.3 eV Mott gap, and theoretical potential for a hidden metal-insulator transition to a distorted rutile phase.

Formal links

2 machine-checked theorem links

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-05-18T03:09:32.252229Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

9f8206be3331bb64ca4aaef17509311e94f7bd87933bcee13c6c5128f38c42bf

Aliases

arxiv: 2601.06716 · arxiv_version: 2601.06716v3 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2601.06716 · pith_short_12: T6BANPRTGG5W · pith_short_16: T6BANPRTGG5WJSSK · pith_short_8: T6BANPRT

Agent API

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Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/T6BANPRTGG5WJSSKV3YXKCJRD2 \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: 9f8206be3331bb64ca4aaef17509311e94f7bd87933bcee13c6c5128f38c42bf

Canonical record JSON

{
  "metadata": {
    "abstract_canon_sha256": "95ddcf259deaafed88546d9053803d140b1905a1af8fbc9c9c60a22fbe29f821",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [],
    "license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/",
    "primary_cat": "cond-mat.mtrl-sci",
    "submitted_at": "2026-01-10T23:18:50Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "8d1f16bddedfe794e9f4bfbf2271dcbfc55bc2429ccb57a4c7f8b6150b4cd0b4"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2601.06716",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 3
  }
}